We need more people like this teacher, who see trouble and run towards it to stop it. Now, just imagine if every teacher had a gun on them. This kid would have never gotten the first round fired off.

This is the teacher who is said to have heroically accosted a 15-year-old boy as he fired bullets across his high school cafeteria.

Megan Silberberger ran into the room after hearing Jaylen Fryberg shoot dead one classmate and critically wound four others.

Students dived for cover and others fled but as the popular teenager stopped to reload his gun, witnesses told KIRO-TV, Silberberger walked over and grabbed his arm.

In a two-second struggle, Fryberg is said to have pointed the gun at her before shooting himself dead.

The shocking account suggests Silberger, a first year social services teacher and part-time soccer player, may have prevented a massacre at the Washington school.

Nonetheless, hundreds of students, teachers and parents piled into a nearby church tonight for a candlelit vigil as the community reels in shock struggling to cope with the tragic loss of life as four teenagers are treated in hospital.

Erick Cervantes, the first student who called 911 during the attack, told KIRO-TV: ‘I believe [Megan Silberger] is actually the real hero.

‘She’s the one that intercepted him with the gun.

‘He tried either reloading or tried aiming at her. She tried moving his hand away and he tried shooting and shot himself in the neck.

‘It started off with an argument, but then I looked back and there was just gunshots and just people falling down.

‘She heard the gunshots first and she came in running through the door, right next to it.

‘It wasn’t [a] wrestle. She just grabbed his arm, and it lasted like two seconds, and I heard another shot.’